Stardust
by Sakon76
Summary: 2007 movie. He never expected to be the one who lived on.
1. Ashes to Ashes

He'd barely gotten a chance to know Jazz, so it hadn't hurt this much when he'd seen the first lieutenant's body torn into two silvery pieces, cradled gently first in Ironhide's arms, then in Optimus'. The deaths of hundreds of soldiers in Qatar hadn't registered at all. And the humans who'd died in Mission City, horrible as it sounded even to think it to himself, hadn't made him feel more than kind of sad and a little numb. Even though he'd seen the bodies with his own eyes, he hadn't _known_ any of them.

Staring at the battered yellow armor/car shell, splattered with luminous blue fluid that he shouldn't ever touch, green wetness that was coolant, and dark honey-colored oil, all Sam could think was _It wasn't supposed to be this way_.

**Stardust: Ashes to Ashes**  
by K. Stonham  
released 5th February 2008

To say the Autobots "recycled" their dead made it sound horrible. But as Ratchet pointed out, with his version of tact and gentleness that was too often the latter and too seldom the former, it was no more and no less than what nature did with organic bodies. Whether buried or burned, eventually the human body was reduced to component chemicals which fertilized the ground, made plants grow, and those plants fed animals which in turn humans devoured.

Sam couldn't eat dinner after that explanation. Or much of breakfast, which was cereal and milk. Or lunch.

It was only Ironhide's blunt reminder that Bumblebee had valued his life that made him eat again, even though the food now all tasted like ash.

He couldn't watch, let alone help, as Ratchet salvaged what he could from Bumblebee's body. He knew it was their way, and that what was left wasn't _Bumblebee_, but Sam just... couldn't. He couldn't even watch or handle Mikaela going into Ratchet's workshop to help. He knew she was hurting too, and that it was a prime sign of being a Bad Boyfriend to shut her out, but he couldn't help it. He spent days instead at the overlook, running his fingers through scarce, dry tufts of grass, trying not to think or remember or feel. Some days Ironhide sat with him there, or Optimus. Wordlessly. Watching the skies.

They were waiting for more Autobots to come, he knew that. He wondered if, when they did, someone else would be assigned to guard him. How he'd take it. If it would ever be the same. If he would ever be the same.

Long, hot summer days and Bumblebee should have been there, enjoying the sun...

But he wasn't.

"Sam," Optimus said one day, Sam thought it was a Friday, quietly. Sam blinked, looking up at the not-really-a-Peterbilt that shared the hillside with him. "Do you know where all matter originates?"

Sam shook his head.

"Everything we are comes from the fusion that occurs in the heart of stars," the Autobot leader said. "Every molecule on Earth. You. The grass. The tree. Me. All of Cybertron as well."

"And?" Sam asked.

"We're all related in that way," Optimus observed. "It's... something that gives comfort sometimes. To think that we all came from the same place, no matter our different customs, beliefs... or forms."

Sam was quiet for a minute, then asked, "What happens to the dead?"

"Science decrees that human or mechanoid, we're nothing more than a collection of electronic impulses within our bodies, and that once disrupted, our selves are lost forever, erased from the universe as if we never were. Save for the echoes our presence has left, that is." The flame-painted truck sounded at ease with this.

"And religion?" Sam had to ask.

"They're not always different things," Optimus replied placidly. "But... we believe that the spark, what you would call the soul, goes to a matrix within the AllSpark."

"And with the AllSpark destroyed?"

"Who knows?" Prime asked rhetorically. "We believe in eventual reincarnation for our sparks. Perhaps now we will be reincarnated as members of your species."

Sam looked down at his fingers where they twined in the grass. "Do you think Bumblebee would've liked to come back as a human?" he asked.

"He saw so much potential in you," Optimus said. "I think he would like it very, very much."

"Stardust, huh?" Sam asked softly , and felt broken things inside him start to heal just a little. "I hope you're right. Because it's really not fair for him to be lost forever." The grass blurred, and so did his hand and suddenly there was water running down his face and dripping onto his shirt. He heard the unmistakable sound of transformation, and a metal hand, so surprisingly gentle for its size and construction, curled around his back. "I'm sorry," Sam whispered raggedly. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"There was nothing you could have done, Sam," Optimus said quietly, probably also thinking of the black-and-white cop car who had attacked them out of the blue and was now interred with the others in the "Decepticon Graveyard" that the Marianas Trench had become. "It was Bumblebee's choice, and he was honored to the end to be your protector... and your friend."

Finally giving up fully to misery, Sam wrapped his arms around a giant metal thumb and bawled like a child for the memory of sky blue optics, a teasing radio, and someone who had been willing to die for him.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_Years of touch-typing really pays off when your eyes are so blurry with tears you can't see the keyboard. Parts two and three to come in the next few days._


	2. Dust to Dust

It hurt like a physical wound. Like something that was raw and vital and bleeding out heart's blood. But as a mechanic, Mikaela was nothing if not practical, and so she showed up one Sunday at her boyfriend's house and hauled him out by an earlobe pinched firmly between her thumb and forefinger. "Sit," she told him, letting go only to push a helmet in his hands and point at the seat of the Harley she was restoring bit by bit.

Sam took the helmet, looking bewildered. "Where are we going?" he asked.

Mikaela pulled her own helmet on, tightening its strap beneath her chin. She didn't meet Sam's eyes. "Car shopping," she told him.

**Stardust: Dust to Dust**  
by K. Stonham  
released 5th February 2008

They had an argument about it, of course, right there in the driveway of his parents' home, but it was one Mikaela was bound and determined to win, and she'd prepared her ammo in advance. Sam dug his heels in, as he'd been doing for months, refusing to "replace" Bumblebee with another car. It was such a radical change from the kid he'd been in high school, so desperate to get a car that he'd hawked his family heirlooms in class, that it would have been amusing if it hadn't been so sad.

"You can't keep relying on other people for rides," she told him. "Some day you're going to want to go someplace no one else does, and what will you do then?"

"That's what public transport's for," he argued mulishly.

She laughed in derision. "Sam, we live in _Los Angeles county_," she pointed out. "Public transportation is a _joke_."

"I don't want another car," he said stubbornly.

"Want, no," Mikaela said. "Need, yes."

"Dammit, Mickey--" he retorted, then stopped short, his face going pale.

That had been Bumblebee's nickname for her. He'd practically made Toni Basil's "Mickey" her theme song, for months playing a snippet of it every time she'd walked up to the yellow Camaro. Mikaela took a breath, calming herself, pushing back the hurt and loss and blinking away the threatening tears. "You don't have to buy," she told Sam lowly, "just look, okay?"

He looked at her for a minute, then nodded and quietly put on the helmet.

* * *

This was the third used car dealership they'd been to and still nothing had "pinged" for either of them. Mikaela sighed, rubbing the back of a hand against an itch on her forehead. Sam had blatantly refused to go to Bolivia's Used Cars, and after his mumbled explanation of having purchased Bumblebee there, she hadn't been able to say a word about his hesitancy. Still, though, with the way they were batting a thousand, it was looking like it was going to be a waste of a Sunday.

That was, until he froze, looking into the far back corner of the lot. Mikaela followed his gaze, and...

She had to remember to breathe again.

It was a beat-up 1977 Chevy Camaro. Faded blue paint, not yellow, and no black racing stripes, but the lines... oh, the lines were right.

She swallowed. "Let's take a look," she forced herself to say, and started walking, ignoring her boyfriend's half-hearted protest of her name.

He was right behind her, though, when she reached the vehicle and ran a considering hand over its roof. This, she thought, might just be what Sam needed. She frowned as she lifted her hand and found a smear of blue on it. Grimacing, she wiped it off on the hip of her jeans. "Get in," she told him. "Tell me what you think."

"Mikaela," he protested, but obeyed, opening the driver's door and sitting in the seat. He rocked back and forth a little, hands on the steering wheel. He had a faint frown as he looked up at her. "It's not him."

"No, it's not," she agreed, watching as Sam's eyes drifted sadly to the center of the wheel. Bumblebee had had an Autobot symbol there. This beater would only have Chevrolet's. "But it might be your new car. Pop the hood."

He did and she looked inside and was promptly horrified. Bumblebee's engine had been a thing of beauty and a joy to behold, all power and performance and gleaming parts. This junker's was... junk. "High mileage," she listed a little loudly, for the benefit of the salesman in her peripheral vision who was approaching them. "The engine's a badly maintained piece of crap. Balding tires. I'll lay money the brake pads are shot and the shocks are spongy. It'll take a ton of work to make this thing worth driving." She turned and looked at the salesman. "The price sticker says four grand. We'll give you two."

"Mikaela!" Sam protested.

* * *

Ratchet looked up as a blue hunk of human car pulled into the hangar, followed narrowly by Mikaela on her motorcycle. He frowned at the noxious plume of chemicals following the larger vehicle, and looked expectantly at his student as she took her helmet off and shook her hair free. "And just what is this?" he asked her as the vintage Camaro spluttered to a stop and Sam exited the blue car.

"Our new project," she said, and grinned cheekily. Sam, on the other hand, looked wan as he looked around Ratchet's repair bay. It was the first time he'd been inside in months, and Ratchet was suddenly glad that his storage shelves had steel doors shuttering their contents away from prying eyes. Sam hadn't stepped foot in his domain since Bumblebee's death, and he had no wish for the human boy to suffer further by seeing his friend's dismantled parts.

"That," Ironhide opined, sticking his head in the hangar, "is a piece of slag. I hope you didn't pay too much for it."

Sam snorted and smiled, just a little. "You should've seen Mikaela talk them down," he told the weapons specialist. "She started out at half the asking price and got it down to a quarter."

"That bad?" Ratchet asked, canting an optical ridge.

"Utter piece of crap," she confirmed, smiling. "Which we are going to fix up since it's high time Sam learned his way around the inside of a car."

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_This part was actually the first part of the story I came up with, wondering what Sam's reaction would be to having a different car if he ever lost Bumblebee. More reaction to the junker to come in part three._


	3. We All Fall Down

Sam didn't love his second car as much as he had loved his first. He knew he never would. His second car didn't change stations on him, mysteriously take off in the middle of the night, come back the next morning to stalk him all over Pasadena, and get him embroiled in interstellar wars that had been going on longer than his species had even existed.

And that, frankly, was the problem.

**Stardust: We All Fall Down**  
by K. Stonham  
released 5th February 2008 

The car was not only not Bumblebee, it was an utter hunk of junk, and the more time Sam spent working on it, finally learning the ins and outs of automobiles under Mikaela and Ratchet's guidance, the more he appreciated that fact. He stuck with the blue paint job, though he occasionally thought of changing it to yellow with black racing stripes, but usually that thought made him freeze and have to take deep breaths, willing away the cold wave of _loss_ that threatened to swamp him.

Once in a while the car actually helped, though. He sometimes almost forgot, when he had a grimy piece of engine or undercarriage in his hand and was cleaning it up so Mikaela or Ratchet could determine whether or not it was still sound beneath its mucky exterior. Covered in grease himself, he almost forgot that his friend was dead, had died protecting him, was never coming back to wake him up with a cheery beep from the driveway and an open door, an invitation to just _ride_...

Bumblebee was never coming back, but when Sam woke up in the middle of the night and looked out at the driveway, at the Camaro sitting there, colors muted and silvered by the moon and streetlights, he sometimes almost forgot.

The minute after waking was the worst.

* * *

The Camaro wasn't Bumblebee, it was never going to be Bumblebee, and even when Sam turned the ignition and the new engine rumbled to life, he wondered why he wasn't sharing in Mikaela's elation at a job well done, or even in Ratchet's bemused tolerance of the repaired inferior technology. He listened to the engine and his girlfriend's whoop of delighted laughter, and wondered when he was going to feel better. If he was ever going to feel better. 

Quietly, he shut off the engine and stepped out of the open driver's door. "Mikaela!" When her head turned to look at him, he tossed the keys in the air. They arced up and then back down, a glittery silver object tumbling through space, and she grabbed them instinctively.

"Sam?"

He forced a smile. "Why don't you take it for a spin? You've put the most work into it, after all."

"Sam..." Her expression showed what her voice didn't: that she was still worried for him.

"I just need some time to think, okay?" He walked to stand in front of her, hands catching hers, holding them.

"Sam, it's been months."

He nodded, holding her gaze. "I know. I just... I just need time, okay?"

She studied him, then slowly nodded. "You just let me know if there's anything I can do, okay?"

"Yeah." He kissed the top of her forehead in a promise. "I'm going to be at the overlook for a while. Call me if you need me."

She nodded. "Okay." And she let him go.

He made his way out of Ratchet's hangar and up the gentle slope of the hill beside it. About a mile down through the tall grass, with its well-worn path of tire treads crushing a road of sorts, was the overlook with its scrubby brush, view of the city, and the tree that they'd strung white lights on a long time ago. Sam used the walking time to think, and wasn't surprised at all when a few minutes later a long, leisurely stride brought flame-painted blue legs level with him. "Hey, Optimus."

"Sam," the alien leader replied, and matched his pace. Sam didn't know if Optimus was worried about him the same way everyone else seemed to be. He probably was. Prime was like that. Sam wondered if there would come a point when the subtle attention everyone was paying to him would start irritating him.

He clambered up in the tree when they reached the outlook. Ironhide was already there, folded into Topkick form, catching the lingering last rays of the sun. The tree's lights came on as Sam was hefting himself up a branch, and he smiled a fraction, wondering which of the mechanoids had remotely turned them on. Optimus sat on the cliff, legs dangling out over the precipice, so that when Sam reached his destination branch and got himself situated comfortably, there were almost eye-to-optic.

They spent a few wordless minutes each looking out at the sunset vista, before Sam broke the silence. "He's not the first person in my life to've died, you know?" he asked rhetorically. "I had four grandparents. I'm down to one now, my mom's mom. I went to three funerals between the ages of five and fifteen." He took a breath. "I took their deaths bad, but... it didn't take me this long to deal with it for any of them."

Optimus was silent for a minute, save for the ever-present clicking and whirring of gears and servos within the mechanical body. "Once in a great while," he said eventually, "we meet someone who changes our lives forever, becomes so much a part of ourselves that we find it difficult to remember what life was like before that person." He turned his head to look at Sam. "Isn't that right?"

Sam swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat, fought back hot tears. Optimus had hit the proverbial nail on the head. "Yeah," he forced out.

The engine of the black Topkick rumbled softly. "Bumblebee did not make bad choices," he opined. "Whether in battle, or in friendship. You've proven that."

Sam closed his eyes, drew a shuddering breath. "I still see him in my dreams," he confessed. "I know it's stupid and he's gone, but it feels like he's really there, and we talk..." His voice trailed off and he didn't know what he was trying to say.

"What do you talk about?" Optimus asked.

"Stuff. Why he died when he could've just gotten away." Sam blinked open his eyes at the sound of transformation, confirming that it was just Ironhide returning to his humanoid form. "The damn car," he added.

Ironhide snorted a laugh. "Even dead he's still concerned for you. Typical."

Optimus vented a sigh. "I knew Bumblebee for a long time. Longer than you could imagine, Sam. He was always driven to do the right thing. More than some Autobots," he added pointedly, and Ironhide snorted again. "He protected you because you were his friend and he valued that. I can tell you with no doubts that the only thing he would have regretted was leaving you in this pain."

Sam breathed the ghost of a laugh. "That's what he keeps saying."

"Then you should listen to him," Ironhide grumbled. He looked past Sam. "Optimus?"

The leader of the Autobots shrugged. "If you think he's ready for it," he deferred.

"_I_ think we should have given it to him months ago," the weapons specialist grumbled. "Sam, your hand." Unsure where this was going, but trusting his friend, Sam obeyed and held out a hand. Ironhide placed giant digits above his, then, out of a hidden compartment, something small and cold fell into Sam's hand. His fingers closed instinctively around it before he caught full sight of what it was. Curious, he unfolded his hand.

A gleaming yellow ring rested in his palm, two black stripes racing around the circle.

Sam raised his eyes to the two mechanoids. "It was made from his armor," Optimus Prime told him. "We believed you might eventually want a way to remember... a physical tie to remind you of him."

"Since your kind can't take on pieces, it was decided this would be the best kind of memento," Ironhide said gruffly, and looked away. "Not like you'd forget him anyway," he grumbled under his breath.

"Bumblebee served under my command for over fifty thousand of your years," Optimus told Sam. "He was always a brave soldier, desiring to be better than he perceived himself to be. It was only in the last three years that I ever saw him realize he was good enough."

Sam couldn't speak. He hadn't thought he'd affected Bumblebee at all--how could someone as small and weak and ephemeral as himself change someone who was so old, and strong, and who had seen so much? He turned the ring over and over in his hand, staring at it dumbly.

"He did not give his allegiance blindly, nor do any of us value his insight and sacrifice so little, Sam," Optimus told him. "You are worth Bumblebee's death. Not one among us would say differently."

Ratchet had probably made the ring. It was light and cool and warming quickly to the touch, like a part of Bumblebee was contained within it. Sam knew without measuring that it would fit perfectly. Who knew that Ratchet's scans could be used for jewelry. He breathed out a small sigh and looked back up, meeting first one pair of blue optics, then another. "I'd be honored," he said quietly, and slid the ring onto the third finger of his right hand. It fit like it had been made for him.

It had.

Optimus and Ironhide both smiled, and the three of them returned back to contemplating the sunset. Eventually Ironhide spoke up again. "When are you going to get that vehicle of yours repainted?" he asked. "It's leaving blue paint molecules all over the hangar."

"Mikaela says the paint should be the last thing to worry about fixing," Sam told him. Ironhide snorted his opinion of that.

"What color would you be considering?" Optimus asked.

Looking at the ring on his finger, part of his friend, Sam suddenly knew the answer. "Red," he replied. "Red with two black stripes." It wasn't the same as Bumblebee, but it would remind him of his friend, and that was enough. He smiled a little. "The red ones go faster, you know," he teased.

"Interesting," Optimus said.

"That would explain some driving I've seen," Ironhide agreed.

Above them, a shooting star fell to Earth.

* * *

**Author's Notes**

_Huh. Sam's issues with the car ended up less volatile in text than I'd thought they would be. Nonetheless, the end came about to where I thought he'd end up. This story, in retrospect, ends up owing props to Dwimordene's "Bridges" and David Hines' "Pieces of the Dead" for fairly obvious reasons. Sorry the story ended up so talky; I hope y'all enjoyed it regardless._


End file.
